Users in online communities use online interfaces to interact with other users in their communities. Users can access these online interfaces to create discussions, create posts, respond to posts, submit blog entries, share content, add comments, give advice, chat with one another in chat rooms, collaborate on projects, play games together, or participate in virtual worlds together. Online communities often use gamification techniques that reward users in the community with badges based on their roles or participation. For example, a user may be assigned a “moderator” badge reflecting the user's role as a moderator. As another example, a user may earn a “gold” badge based on having submitted at least 100 posts in the online community. The ability to earn badges encourages participation. The badges also allow the users in the online community to recognize the roles and achievements of other users. Badges are often displayed along with a user's interactions in the online interfaces of the online community. For example, when a user with an “expert” badge responds to a question in a website forum, that user's identity and badge appear with the response. This allows other users who view the response to recognize that the response was provided by a user who has an “expert” badge.
Many online communities use a site-level gamification system that displays all of a user's badges for the entire site. This often dilutes the effect and context of user badges, especially on sites with multiple online communities. For example, a user may be awarded a “gold” badge based on participation in a particular online community on a site that includes 5 other online communities. When posting in the other 5 online communities, the user's “gold” badge is misleading regarding the user's interest and expertise in those other online communities. Another problem involves the clutter that occurs when users achieve many badges in the multiple online communities provided by a site. For example, displaying 30 badges from 6 different online communities when the user posts in any of those online communities can be visually overwhelming. With so many badges displayed, other users may not notice, recognize, or appreciate the badges that are relevant to the particular online community. In contrast to site-level gamification, other gamification systems isolate badges to individual online communities. This isolation is also often undesirable since online communities commonly relate to one another and the systems do not display badges from those related online communities.